Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday April 01, 2010 @04:17PM
from the it's-all-in-the-name-of-science dept.

ByronScott writes "Early this morning NASA kicked off Operation LENS, an ambitious plan to concentrate and collect solar power using a giant magnifying glass in outer space. Long speculated to be a rumor, the 7,000,000 ft. wide lens was fabricated over the course of the past three years and launched from Cape Canaveral much to the dismay of almost every scientist in the world. While the first phase went exactly as planned, the plan hit a major snag when the magnifying glass began to work a bit too well, and ended up scorching large regions in the western hemisphere."

Actually, I was wrong. The site today was written by a new script for the Eliza program entirely running in emacs which just puts together random articles. humor.el still isn't working but RMS should have it fixed by late 2013.

God forbid anyone have a little fun 1 day out of the year. It's April fools day, Slashdot has been doing this forever, yet somehow people still fail to expect an April fools day joke on April fools, and then whine like it couldn't have been foreseen at every single article. If you really can't handle some people enjoying themselves, get away from/. for the day. Your SCO lawsuit, microsoft-blunder-of-the-week, MAFIAA, and LHC news will be back tomorrow. For today, you just have to take the needle out of you

I still remember the OMGPONIES edition (2007?), when the theme was changed to pink and a few insightful jokes were posted. (Anyone knows how I can find those stories? I can't and I'd really really like to bookmark them)

you must be new here. I bet if you look back on the last 5 years on 1st April, you will see the same old comments:)
"Please stop",
"/. worthless for a day",
"see you tomorrow",
"im not coming back",
etc.

Slashdot has been doing stupid April 1 shit for more than 10 years, and hasn't heeded any negative comments about 1) the fact that they do it at all, 2) the style/type/content of the jokes, or 3) the amount/length of time that it goes on. Everyone should be well aware of this by now. If you can't stand it, leave. Or start your own tech/politics site that doesn't do stupid April 1 shit. The editors here obviously don't care about any opinions about April 1 shenanigans, and will continue to do as they please.

Additionally, posting a "Please stop" comment on April 1 is karma whoring. It's a +5 Insightful for what amounts to a first post.

Additionally, posting a "Please stop" comment on April 1 is karma whoring. It's a +5 Insightful for what amounts to a first post.

Posting anything that people will agree with is karma whoring! So stop playing up to the masses all the time! If your comments aren't constantly being modded "overrated" or "troll" then you're just karma whoring!

The day they did OMG Ponies was great. All the jokes had a theme (ponies), everything reported on had ponies on it. It was easy to tell what was fake, the site was sparkly pink, and as things got more and more ridiculous through the course of the day it became more and more funny.
The last few years have been far less coherent. They would be better served by posting a few funny joke stories, instead of a deluge of mediocre ones. Brevity being the soul of wit and such. Failing that, come up with a theme. It

Talk about having no life. If slashdot doesn't post anything these people like, do they really have that much trouble finding something else to do? At the very least find other sites to visit...for one...fucking...day. The internet is a big place.

April Fools Jokes get old when 100% of the stories on your site consist of them. I enjoyed the days of past when you found it fun to try and figure out which stories were jokes. Now every damn story is a "joke". Stops being cute/funny really really fast.

This is not 1/1000 as bad as the Year of OMGPOnies. Figure approximately 120 stories, all in a horrible pink color scheme and done with a stereotypical valley-girl dialect. About half were ThinkGeek advertisements, and the other half ridiculous april fool stories.

The jokes have to be really outlandish, otherwise certain people take them seriously.

Example:

Headline: Apple invents iDead - Apple unveiled today a revolutionary, magically device that kills people.Result: Obviously a joke, no one will take it seriously.

Headline: Apple invents iEye - Apple today unveiled a revolutionary, magically device that integrates with the optic nerve to restore sight to blind people.Result: People believe it, Apple stock goes way up. People get rich. Once it is found to be a joke (it

Just from the headline, I knew it was prank.
And that was before I remembered today is April Fool Day.
What is really funny about attempting to trick people? So they might look stupid.... and that would make you look smart? To whom?

The magnifying glass is scorching only the Western Hemisphere because it's been placed in a geosynchronous orbit. NASA is rumored to be preparing to reposition it to LaGrangian Point L1 to provide a greater degree of stability, provided that they can account for positional oscillation resulting from the moon revolving around the Earth. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is preparing to return the Hubble Space Telescope's COSTAR lens to NASA for refurbishing and redeployment to corr

I know it's an April Fools prank, but the lady down the street thinks this has already happened to the World Trade Center!
She has been posting flyers for about 2 years now.
She also thinks my dog (black lab) is a member of the CIA in disguise keeping an eye on her.
Oh man, I am laughing so hard just thinking about it again.